‘Family Portrait in Black and White’

Family Portrait in Black and White

Olga Nenya and her foster and adopted children in 2008, in front of their house in Ukraine, as seen in the documentary directed by Julia Ivanova.Credit
First Pond Entertainment

“Family Portrait in Black and White,” a documentary by Julia Ivanova, leaves a lot of questions unanswered, which is frustrating, but it gets high marks for honesty.

It would have been easy for this film, which is about a woman in Ukraine and the more than 20 adopted and foster children she has taken in, to be a hagiography, but instead it’s a portrait of an imperfect solution in a country that seems to have a lot that needs solving.

The woman’s name is Olga Nenya, and she has made it her particular mission to provide a home for mixed-race children who have been abandoned by their parents. That is a brave thing for her to do because such children are shunned by many in Ukraine, which has a virulent skinhead movement. We don’t learn much about Ms. Nenya, like why she got into this work or what financial resources she is drawing on to put food in all those hungry mouths.

We do, however, learn that though she is surely giving her charges a better life than they would have had in an orphanage, her home is no paradise. She seems to have a problem letting go as the children age, and she sounds like something of a control freak.

“If you think about it, our family resembles a totalitarian, Soviet regime,” one child who has gone off to college says. Then he adds, “I felt I was a dissident in our family.”

Family Portrait in Black and White

DirectorJulia Ivanova

RatingNot Rated

Running Time1h 30m

GenreDocumentary

Movie data powered by IMDb.com
Last updated: Mar 30, 2016

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Directed by Julia Ivanova
In Russian, Italian and Ukrainian, with
English subtitles
1 hour 25 minutes; not rated

A version of this review appears in print on July 13, 2012, on page C8 of the New York edition with the headline: Family Portrait in Black and White. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe